Realist State
by William Easley
Summary: Wendy, Dipper, Mabel, and Teek are set for a long, relaxing day together, and wouldn't you know it? A bad-news note makes them have to cancel their plans and solve a problem they didn't anticipate. How can you attend college when you're homeless?
1. Chapter 1

_I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you._

* * *

**Realist State**

**(July 31, 2019)**

* * *

**1: Bad News in the Mailbox**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines: **_Monday morning: I think we may be cursed! Today Mabel, Teek, Wendy, and I planned a picnic and some sight-seeing around the Valley. No monsters, no mysteries, no worries, just a nice long lazy day with people we love._

_But then . . . at the breakfast table, Soos slapped his forehead and said, "Dawgs! With Mabel being Queen of the Gnomes and all, I forgot, but a letter came for you guys on Saturday. It was marked 'urgent.' I put it somewhere so I wouldn't forget to give it to you. Where did I put it?"_

_After he'd looked in about a dozen places, Melody suggested to check the stuff held to the fridge by magnets, because Soos generally sorts the mail in the kitchen, chunking fliers and ads and things into the garbage bin. Sure enough, it was there, a heavyweight cream-colored envelope from Western Alliance University in Crescent City, California—where Wendy and I are heading to college. It had been forwarded to us from home. And it was addressed to "Mr. Mason Pines and Mrs. Wendy Corduroy Pines."_

"_What is it, dude?" Wendy asked, coming to look over my shoulder as I opened the envelope and took out a stapled packet of sheets, one typed or, I guess, word-processed, and the rest sort of bad photocopies._

_The letter first. It was impersonal: Dear Incoming Student(s)._

_It was dated the previous Thursday, and the letter began badly: "We regret to inform you . . .."_

* * *

Wendy read aloud: "We regret to inform you that owing to a larger than expected group of incoming married students and to the University's rule that freshman students are low priority for limited dormitory space . . .." She stopped reading and made a face. "Ugh! We got bumped from Married Housing? Can they do that? Is it fair?"

"They can do it," Dipper told her, his heart sinking. "And no, it isn't fair. The letter says the attachments are for off-campus housing that may or may not be available. It's up to us to call and see if we can get into any of it."

"Oh, man!" Mabel said. "There goes our day."

"How goes your day?" It was Stan, walking in as though he owned the place, which technically he did, together with Ford. "Cuppa coffee? Thanks, Melody. What's up? You guys look like you lost a relative or something."

"We lost a place to live this fall," Wendy said. "WAU kicked us off the list for married housing!"

"Man, that's tough," Stan said, reaching for the letter. "Lemme see. Priority, hmm. List of off-campus housing. Anything look good, Dip?"

"Everything looks pricey," Dipper said, flipping through the twelve back-and-front printed photocopies. "And a bunch of them won't take couples at all."

"Boo," Mabel said. "Discrimination!"

"Yeah, that's tough," Stan said.

"I am so mad," Wendy said. "But that won't help. Guess we gotta get on the stick and see if we can find an alternative. We have to be realists about this stuff."

Stan checked his watch. "Look, I got nothin' much to do today. I just came over to see if maybe Soos wanted to go fishing, but this is a big deal. Tell you what: I got a connection at WAU. I kinda used to date the Dean there, long time back. Let's us drive down to Crescent City and see if old Stan can't pull a few strings."

"Umm . . .." Dipper said, trailing off.

Wendy looked dubious. "I'm not sure that would help, Stan. College is pretty bureaucratic. I went to the Community College, you know—they hate to bend rules or change things."

"Meh, what could it hurt to try?" Stan asked. "Mabel, Sweetie, you want to come along for the ride?"

"Sure! Can Teek come, too?"

"That's fine by me, but leave the dog at home, OK? Hey, maybe we can swing by that artsy-fartsy school you're going to be attending, too. Take a look at the campus and all. It's close to Western Alliance, ain't it?"

"Three or four miles away," Mabel said. "I'm calling Teek right now." She had her cell phone out and speed-dialed him.

* * *

The upshot was that Teek came over and they all climbed into the Stanleymobile and buckled up. Stan warned, "One thing: If I come through for you guys, you gotta chip in for gas money. Deal?"

"I'll buy the gas whether you can get us into Married Housing or not," Dipper said. "It's nice of you to even try."

"Nice, shmice. It's what you gotta do for family. Heck, I'd even help Ford out if he asked for it. Don't tell him that, he might ask for something."

Instead of heading over to Portland and then taking I-5 south, Stan drove to US20, hung a right, and then took a left onto state route 126, a scenic route through the Cascades and down to Eugene, before getting onto the freeway south. Traffic was steady, but not too terrible, and they got to Western Alliance before noon. "You four wait in the car," Stan said. "I'm gonna go into the Administration Building and see what I can do."

They didn't stay in the car but wandered around the central campus. WAU was a pretty school, with a few older buildings and many newer ones. Green lawns and fountains, benches lining shady walkways, flower beds—the kids strolled around. A few students walked past, most intent on their cell phones, but the summer session didn't seem heavily attended.

Finally they sat on a bench in the shade of a spreading old California buckeye tree. Slouching, Dipper muttered, "I hope Stan doesn't just stir up trouble."

"What are you guys gonna do if there's no room anywhere on campus for you?" Mabel asked.

Wendy shrugged. "Start checkin' out the places that'll rent to young marrieds," she said. "But it'll cost a lot."

Dipper said, "Well, we can afford it, I guess. I have some pretty good savings from my publishing income. I thought we'd keep that for a nest egg to buy a house eventually, but whatever."

"Hey," Mabel said in a soothing voice, "how about this? If you can rent, like, a house, could I come in with you? I hate the idea of living in a dorm room meant for two people when I'll have three roomies—and bunk beds, agh! I'd chip in what I'd pay for the dorm room, and I could sleep on the sofa or whatever—"

"I wouldn't want you to do that," Teek said. "And I'll bet most of the places that Wendy and Dipper can find wouldn't have room enough."

Mabel wilted. "Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Just Mabel being selfish."

"No, no," Wendy said, taking her hand. "Seriously, if we could find an affordable place that had enough room—even a house, but the rent on them's insanely high—yeah, that would work."

Dipper smiled and nodded. "Mabel and I have lived under one roof so far, and neither of us has killed the other yet. If we can work it out—but I don't know if any of these places would go for that. Only about a third of them will even look at a married couple as tenants, and half of those say 'no children.'"

"Would Olmsted even let you do that, Mabel?" Teek asked.

Mabel said, "Oh, sure. They got this dumb rule that freshmen have to live on campus, but they do make exceptions if they have relatives nearby who they can live with and if they have transportation to and from campus. I'll meet both requirements."

"Let's not count our chickens," Dipper said. "Here comes Grunkle Stan, and he doesn't look happy."

Indeed, Stan's face was as foreboding as a funnel cloud over a Kansas prairie. He herded them off the bench where they sat. "C'mon, knuckleheads. Told you to wait in the car. Anybody gotta use the can? Speak up now, 'cause we got some ridin' around to do!"

Everyone went to the library, which was near the visitors' parking lot and which offered clean restrooms. Then they climbed into the Stanleymobile. "What happened, Grunkle Stan?" Dipper asked.

"Eh, don't ask! I'll tell ya about it after I cool off some. My contact couldn't do a thing about Married Housing, but she did put me onto a maybe. It's probably worse than the Shack was when you guys stayed there the first summer, but beggars can't be choosy."

"If I was a beggar, I'd be choosy as heck," Mabel said. "Hey, Mister, what's with the buck? I can see fives and tens in your wallet! Fork over!"

"I think that counts as extortion," Teek said.

"Where are we going?" Wendy asked as Stan started the engine. He reached into his jacket and handed her a folded paper. "It's like eight or ten miles from here, Carla didn't know exactly. She wrote down the directions for me. You read 'em out."

"Give me the address," Dipper said. "I'll put in in my phone GPS."

"That's the trouble with the world today," Stan growled. "Everybody lets machines boss 'em around!"

"It's cool, Dip," Wendy said. "I don't mind. OK, Stan, turn left out of the parking lot. We're gonna go north on College Avenue until we hit West Washington, then a left, and then from West Washington a right onto Riverside."

"What is this? A house?" Mabel asked. "Are they gonna rent a house?"

"Could be a rusted-out mobile home," Stan growled. "Maybe no electricity, water from a well, an outhouse instead of a toilet."

"That sounds adorable!" Mabel

She always seemed to find the bright side, even when all the sides were dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Realist State**

**(July 31, 2019)**

* * *

**2: They Shouldn't take One More Step**

To Dipper it was amazing how fast they left the suburbs and found themselves out in the country._ Country _country, too, not that genteel modern-house-on-an acre-with-a-garden, but old weathered farmhouses, lots of land around them, cows in meadows, collies trotting up to fences to gaze at the red-and-white car as it glided by.

Then came the woods, dark and deep (but if you'd spent time in Gravity Falls, your first reaction wasn't like old Bobby Frost's "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," but "The woods are scary, dark and deep, and eldritch things within them creep"). Hills and swaths cut for power lines, bridges over small dwindled streams all passed. For a minute, pines crowded up on both sides of the narrow road, and it seemed as if they were driving into deep forest.

However, between the clumps of woods Dipper glimpsed brighter views of pine-clad hills, not as high as those around the Falls, but sort of pretty anyhow. After maybe eight miles of driving, Stan turned right on a short secondary road and pulled off on the grassy shoulder in front of a house. "Guess this is it," he said. "Right number on the mailbox."

"No way," Mabel said from the passenger side of the back seat. "It couldn't be. This is too small. And nice."

They were looking at a redwood frame ranch house off to their right, in a clearing and all on its lonesome. The front yard was overgrown, scraggly and straggly—it's a dry area, and even St. Augustine grass sometimes struggles along in high summer. The ranch house wasn't tiny, wasn't huge—somewhere in-between. The lawn between it and the road was sort of shallow, but the house seemed to perch on the edge of a ridge that dropped down a few feet—and behind the house, maybe even attached to it, was a new-looking redwood privacy fence, the pickets at least six feet tall.

"Man, this is way out of our league," Wendy said, staring at the house. It wasn't an old farm place, but looked spruce, with fresh white trim. On the right, a concrete driveway led to a wide garage door. The drive spread into an apron with room for another two or three cars.

Stan grumbled, "Well, I drove us here. Might as well get out of the car and take a look-see. Couldn't hurt."

They all climbed out beneath a blue sky streaked with cirrus clouds. Dipper herd the repeated _shook-shook-shook_ calls of a couple of Steller's jays disputing territorial boundaries. "How big is this place?" Dipper asked.

Stan pulled another paper out of his pocket. "Let's see. Says here on the main level, which I guess is the top one, there's 1190 square feet of heated space. That's a master bedroom and bath, a nursery—I think that window on the left front is it—and then on the right side of the house as you face it, there's a guest bedroom with a separate bathroom. Other than that, a great room. I think 'great' is an architect's term for 'adequate.' It's a kitchen-dining-living room combo, in other words. But wait, there's more."

"Wendy's right," Dipper said, looking past her. "We'd burn through my savings in one semester. Let's just go."

Stan shook his head. "No, no, wait. On the back side, there's a walk-out basement, whatever that is. A utility room down there—that's like heating, water heater, air-conditioning, yada yada. A bonus room, ten by twelve. Half-bath, I guess that's a toilet and a sink, right?"

Teek had walked around to the side of the garage and came back looking impressed. "This must've been a farmhouse," he said. "That back yard is big!"

"Yeah, it sits on seven acres," Stan said. "They'd cost more than the whole house! Let's see . . . two-car garage off there on the right, a mud room—what's one of them?"

"We've got one," Teek said. "It's like a wide passage from the garage into the kitchen, and the washer and dryer are in there."

"Ooh, fancy!" Stan said. He walked up to the front door and peered in one of the window panels. "Huh, get this: The last people who lived here didn't even move their furniture out."

"Grunkle Stan!" Dipper said, pointing. "There's a sign beside the walk that says the house is protected by an alarm system!"

"Yeah, police and fire department are probably off like in San Diego!" Stan said with a snort. He rattled the doorknob. "Wouldn't ya know it, locked. Nobody trusts anybody these days."

"Seven acres is a big lot," Teek said.

Stan shrugged. "Used to be like forty. It was a family farm or some deal years ago. You can probably find the ruins of the barn off in the woods behind the house, but the state owns that land now. Let's see what we can do about this." He reached in his trouser pocket and, grinning, took out a pocketknife.

"Um, Stan, excuse me," Wendy said, "but what are you doing?"

Without looking away from the door, Stan replied, "Little trick I learned from a couple of nice guys I shared a room with down in Colombia for five to ten years. Luckily, we got out after three months 'cause Rico knew a whole bunch of little stunts like this."

"Grunkle Stan!" Dipper said. "You're going to get us all arrested!"

"Hah! The police car wasn't made that can outrun the Stanleymobile. On a windy day, with a gale behind it. And on at least a twenty-degree downslope." He had inserted a thin knife blade into the crack of the door and was jiggling the mechanism. "Almost got it . . . almost got it . . .."

Dipper heard a sharp click, and Stan turned the doorknob triumphantly. "Ta-dah! Chumps didn't bother with the deadbolt. Let's go do a walk-through, see if this dump is eaten up with termites!"

"Stan!" Dipper said, twitching in anxiety.

Mabel slapped his shoulder. "Come on, scaredy-cat! What's the worst that could happen?"

"I don't know!" Dipper said. "We get shot? The police arrest us for trespassing, and we get thrown in jail as felons? We can never ever vote or—"

"Meh, look what votin' got us," Stan said. "It's overrated." He shoved the door open and stepped in. No lights were on, but daylight coming through the front windows gave a soft illumination.

Dipper heard a steady electronic beeping, and a mechanical voice, sounding female, said. "The front door is open. The front door is open. The front—"

Dipper heard Stan tapping something and then the computer voice said, "System is disarmed."

"Come on inside!" Stan called. "I turned off the alarm system. It's safe."

They edged in to a large—for the house, anyway—room. Stan stood at a compact console on the wall. He patted it. "Nine times out of ten, you start at the top and tap down the middle, then back up again, you disarm the system. In this case, 2-5-8-5-2. People are sloppy. They deserve to be burgled."

"This place is surprisingly nice!" Mabel said. The room had polished hardwood flooring and redwood walls—rustic, but not really old-fashioned. A tall silk screen with a bamboo pattern marked the living-room section, which along with a sofa and two armchairs had a fireplace, a big-screen TV, and a sound system. To the right of the bamboo screen was the dining area—round table, chairs for six places—and kitchen, compact gas stove, four burners and a grill, oven, and a dishwasher, fridge, and on the countertop a coffee maker, microwave, and toaster. "All the comforts of somebody's home!" Mabel said, like a pitchwoman on one of those TV shows about fixing up a run-down house. She opened a cabinet and added, "Aw, empty! No food or dishes."

Teek stood at a pair of sliding glass doors that looked out onto a back porch. The glass was cloudy with outdoor dust, but it looked as if a good scrubbing would take care of that. He whistled. "The yard is huge!"

"Let me see!" Mabel scrambled over, opened the door, and looked down at the expanse enclosed by the privacy fence. "Grass! And trees! What are they?"

Behind Mabel, Wendy shaded her eyes. The glass really could use a good cleaning. "Um—those over there are four walnut trees, in good shape. I think the ones way down at the back are apple and maybe pear trees. Whole little orchard. Room for a garden, too!"

"Man," Dipper said. "They'd want five thousand a month for this!"

"Ya think?" Stan asked. "I dunno. Carla recommended it. Maybe the family that used to live here died horribly! Maybe a masked murderer broke in and slaughtered the bunch of them in their beds! Their ghosts may haunt this place, moaning and rattling their chains!"

"That _would_ knock the rent down," Teek said, reaching to hold Mabel's hand.

She led him out onto the porch, still looking around. "Wow-wow-wee! There's a hot tub out here!"

"No way!" Wendy said, and she went out on the porch to see, and Dipper followed her. Mabel was right—a smallish hot tub, looking straight off the factory floor, stood on the porch, a thick insulating cover over it. Wendy lifted an edge. "It's empty."

"I hope the pillars underneath are strong," Dipper said. "Water's heavy."

"Tripper would so love this yard!" Mabel said. Then she put her hands to her cheeks. "Oh my gosh! If we lived here, I wouldn't have to leave Tripper in the Shack! He'd have this great yard to play in!"

Wendy had come back inside. She explored the rooms off to the left side of the house. "Master bedroom right here," she called. "Big king-sized bed not made up, though, just a dust cover. Two dressers. Nice walk-in closet, not too spacious, but big enough. Huh, through here is the nursery, I guess. Smaller room, no furniture. Hey, Dip, we could set this up as an office and study room!"

Dipper followed her. "Wendy, we couldn't afford this in a million years! And we're trespassing!"

She put her arm around his shoulder. "Yeah, but it's nice to dream." Wendy opened a door in the passage between bedroom and nursery. "Look at this! Great master bathroom! Big old tub, separate shower stall, low-flow toilet, his and her sinks, even! Oh, man, I wish!"

"Come look, come look!" Mabel's voice. She'd found the guest room on the far side of the house—not huge, maybe twelve by twelve feet, but it had a queen-sized bed, a dresser and a vanity, another small walk-in closet, and its window looked out into the back yard. "The bathroom's right across the hall there," she said. "And best of all, I can walk out of my bedroom, turn right, and pow! The dining room's right there!"

"But we can't afford anything like this!" Dipper insisted.

"Yeah," Stan said, pulling his big red nose. "Kid's prob'ly right. Landlords! Hah! They're just greedy, money-grubbing, low-down crooks, every one of 'em, you ask me!" He flicked a wall switch, and the lights came on. "See? This slob didn't even turn off the power! Betcha the gas is still on, too."

Mabel turned on a burner, which clicked and lit with a blue flame. "You nailed it, Grunkle Stan!" She switched off the burner.

In the living-room area, Stan picked up a remote-control from the coffee table and clicked it at the TV, which came on at once. "Huh. Even got like a satellite feed!" He channel-surfed. "Looks like two, three hundred channels! Betcha that costs a pretty penny—whoa, look, a poker channel! Nice." He settled back on the sofa, crossed his legs, and looked right at home as he pointed at the screen. "Hah, look at this sucker. He's got two Jacks and two fours and a ten, thinks he's got it made, everybody but two others have dropped out—but the guy across from him's holdin' three eights and a queen, plus a deuce. He's playin' him like a salmon!"

"Grunkle Stan, please!" Dipper said. "OK. You can all hang around here and get arrested and thrown in jail if you want to, but I am leaving!"

Without even glancing at his nephew, Stan asked, "Yeah? You walkin' back to the college? What's that thing Wendy says? Chill out. Nothing bad's happened so far. Say, why don't I call Carla at the university and ask her how much the landlord wants for this dump?"

"I'll be in the car," Dipper said.

"No you won't!" Stan jumped off the sofa and made very good speed for a middle-aged gentleman, cutting Dipper off at the doorway. "Look, you're here, your fingerprints are all over, and you might as well wait for Carla's phone call with the bad news. OK?"

"It'll be all right, Dipper," Wendy said. "We can claim Stan forced us to stay."

"That's just what I'll do, too!" Dipper said. "If the police come through that door—"

"Dipper!" Mabel sounded shocked. "You'd rat out a blood relative? Where's the Brobro I knew? Where's the guy who punched out a metal cover thingy and crawled through an air duct to unlock a condemned convenience store?"

"Huh?" Teek asked, his eyes wide.

Mabel confided, "You can read about it in Dip's next book, _An Inconvenient Spook. _It's also got a love story in it, ooh la-la! I think it's his best novel yet!"

"It'll be the _last _one if we get caught!" Dipper said.

Stan punched in a number on his phone. "Hiya, Samantha. Is the Dean in? Tell her it's Stanley calling. Yeah, Stanley. I'll hold the line." He pointed at the TV. "Hah! Told you! The sucker went all-in, and he got beat by a full house, eights and queens. Bye-bye, Herman! You got a lousy poker face." Then, into the phone: "Huh? Oh, like a quarter hour? Sure, she's got this number. You can tell her it's about that house eight or nine miles from campus she put me onto. Yeah, I'll be right here. Thanks, Samantha." He cut the connection. "Face it, we're stuck here for at least fifteen minutes. The secretary says Carla's gonna call me back, but I don't got one of those Bluetooth thingies, and I can't talk on the phone while driving—"

"I could answer it for you!" Dipper said. "Look, there's something very wrong here. This house is supposed to be empty. The grass hasn't been tended in months! But look around—no dust! Did you not notice that? Did you notice the back yard's been mowed, and the fence looks real new? Can't you smell the pine-scented cleaner? It's like someone's still living here! And they might come home at any moment—"

Stan leaned back on the couch and flicked his gaze at a piece of paper. "Nope, this is the right address, and Carla wouldn't give me a bum steer."

"Would she if you asked?" Mabel piped up, excited. "We could keep one in the back yard! There's plenty of grass to graze on!"

"It's not a real bull, it's a whatchacallit, a figment of speech," Stan said. "Everybody, just—just settle. Now honest, what do you guys think of this place? Could you survive in it?"

"Well, yeah," Dipper admitted. "Maybe half an hour from campus if there's traffic, even closer to Olmsted, and it's a quiet place, room enough for three. It would be perfect! But when the Dean calls you back, she's gonna tell you the rent will be super-high—five thousand, ten thousand a month! I looked at places on that list not half this big or nice, and they go for thousands a month."

Mabel had taken the remote and she changed the channels. Then she yelled, "Wait, what?" and turned back two clicks.

"—ing next year!" the announcer said. "Join Alexis and Alexa as they explore the spooky mysteries of—_Granite Rapids_!" On the screen, a cartoon boy and girl riding on a golf cart burst through a billboard that read GRANITE RAPIDS and the screen froze, hanging them in the air. Beneath it, a caption read "Based on the best-selling series by Stan X. Mason! Watch for _Granite Rapids_ in summer, 2018!"

"Dipper! A teaser trailer for the cartoon series based on your books!" Mabel said.

"Uh—they still look way cartoony," Dipper replied. "Their heads are all out of proportion—"

Then everybody jumped.

Because someone pounded on the door with something hard—maybe the butt of an automatic pistol!—and yelled, "Whoever's inside there, open up now and show your hands!"

Stan sighed. "Well, it was a good run," he said. "But I guess they got us."

He strode across the room, yelled "Ya won't take us alive!" and threw the door wide open.


	3. Chapter 3

**Realist State**

**(July 31, 2019)**

* * *

**3: Good to Be Back Home**

Stan yelled, "Jumpin' Geronimo! It's a Federal Agent! Everybody hit the floor!"

Teek actually did. The rest of them stood in shocked silence, just staring. In from the daylight strode—

"The head agent of the Guys in Black!" Stan exclaimed, backing away as if in terror. "The author! My brother!"

"Hello," Ford said mildly, blinking a little. "Um, is there some reason that Mr. O'Grady is lying face-down on the floor?"

"He got tired," Stan said, giving Teek a hand up.

"What's all this about?" Dipper demanded. "What are you two up to?"

"See, Sixer?" Stan said. "That's the thanks we get for providin' these knuckleheads with a perfectly good home for their college experience."

Ford wore one of his trademark mulberry turtlenecks under a thin tan jacket. He didn't often bare his arms, even on hot days because, as he'd once confided to Mabel, he wasn't proud of some tattoos he'd accumulated while traveling across the dimensions. Now he frowned slightly and asked, "Stanley, what . . . did you tell them?" as he stared at their baffled or, in Dipper's case, angry expressions.

Grinning, Stan said, "Nothin' much. I just let them think we were trespassing a little bit."'

"Wait, what?" Wendy said. "It was a trick? Did you guys—buy this house for us?"

"Nope," Stan said firmly. "We bought it for ourselves. It's an investment. But you get to live in it for four years, if you're nice."

Dipper collapsed, sitting on the sofa. His pulse had climbed to a level he usually associated with a sprint. "Oh, my gosh, and I thought you'd gone crazy! But wait, we can't pay you the kind of rent this place—"

"Let's sit at the table," Ford said in a calming voice. "Then we can straighten all this out."

* * *

It wasn't a long story, really. Since the beginning of summer, Stanley had been concerned by Mabel's obvious depression at the idea of going off to school and missing her dog, her brother, and her friends. He'd come into some big money—"Never mind the grand total," he said, "but I'll tell you this much: Our dad's probably restin' real easy in his grave now that I did what he once ordered me to do—make a fortune. Anyhow, I had more than enough dough stashed away to go house-hunting."

"We scouted possible residences in this area," Ford said. "It was hard finding one that was relatively affordable, that was in decent shape, and one we both thought you'd like. But this one is a former farm, it's quiet and out of the way—the last house on this little road, with no neighbors closer than half a mile—and the land butts up against a federal forest area."

"It wasn't exactly cheap, though," Stan said. "Close on to half a mil, counting the land. But like I say, I had more than enough, Ford chipped in, it was a cash sale so we don't have to futz with mortgages and interest, and we plan to re-sell it after you guys finish college. Trust me, we'll net a healthy profit."

"But—we can't just stay here without paying any rent!" Dipper blurted. "That's not fair to you!"

"Speak for yourself, Brobro!" Mabel told him. "Don't look a gift horse in the face!"

"You won't get off scot free," Stanford said with a chuckle. He took a notebook from his pocket and opened it. "Here's what we propose: You will pay Stanley enough to take care of the property taxes. You'll also be responsible for the utilities—that means mainly gas and the satellite TV hookup. Fiddleford's installed one of the zero-point energy cubes back behind the fence—our property line runs about twenty feet past it, to the middle of a little stream that's nearly dry right now. Anyway, the stretch between the creek and the fence was the safest place to bury it."

"Wait, why _bury _it?" Mabel asked.

"Well," Ford said, "they have a slight but distressing chance of exploding now and then. It probably won't happen with this one, but just in case, it's down in a sort of reinforced concrete bunker with a heavy steel lid. It's locked, but you won't need the key—the copies of that are with Fiddleford, Stan, and me, and one in a safety deposit box. We buried the main power cable leading to the house—it's inside a shielded woven-steel casing, to discourage burrowing, gnawing rodents—but don't dig anywhere along the eastern part of the fence. And if you happen to hear a muffled boom and all the lights go out, call us and Fiddleford will come and replace the unit."

"Not that we think that will happen," Stan said quickly. "McGucket's unit gives you up to about 1200 kilowatt hours every month—more'n he thinks you'll need—and the ones that size are pretty stable, he says. OK, so aside from taxes and utilities, if you break something, you fix it or pay to have it fixed out of your own pockets. We won't ask for a damage deposit, 'cause we know where you live. We won't even tell you not to have any parties, because you're kids, though you think you're grown up, and kids gotta play. But you break it, you pay for it, just like in the Shack."

"If the appliances wear out, though," Ford said, "we'll repair or replace them. Just let us know if there's any trouble."

"Normal wear and tear he means," Stanley said. "Not seein' how far you can throw the refrigerator off the deck."

Ford added, "Also, I safe-guarded the house with moonstones and unicorn hair. There wasn't enough to include the back yard, so in case of a paranormal attack, stay safe inside the house. Not that I expect anything to happen. This area isn't a weirdness hot spot."

"Yeah, no extra charge from the voodoo," Stan said. "Just taxes, utilities, no incidentals."

"What does that all come to?" Wendy asked.

"We were getting to that," Ford told them. "First of all, tell me if this seems equitable: You divide the taxes, utilities, et cetera, on a per capita basis."

Stan rolled his eyes. "Talk English, Poindexter! Look, kids, you divide the amount you pay us three ways. Mabel pays a third, Dip and Wendy pay two-thirds. That sound fair?"

Wendy took Dipper's hand. _Let's go for it, Dip!_

—_I'm still pissed at Stan for scaring us—_

_It sounds like a good deal, and he's being nice now._

Dipper asked, "How much will it be?"

"Two hundred a month from Mabel, four hundred from you and Wendy. That's for the nine months you'll be away at school. We'll waive the summer payments provided you guys come back to Gravity Falls each year. Of course, if you gotta come back for any school or research reasons, the house is yours to stay in. How's that sound?"

Well—it sounded a whole lot cheaper than dorm rental at either Olmsted College of the Arts or Western Alliance University, and it bought a whole lot more bang per buck. "We can swing that," he said, breathing more easily. "Uh—I don't think you should have pulled this trick, but—the house and all—it's good of you both."

"Not just us," Ford said, smiling. "Fiddleford insisting on contributing too. He worked out the whole power supply engineering for the house. Oh, remind me later and I'll show you where the circuit breakers are, downstairs in the utility room. They are carefully labeled, and I've double-checked the accuracy and rendered Fiddleford's terms in more everyday language—_Freezer_, for example, instead of _Frigidmabox_. He also installed the burglar alarm system. Door and window alarms, motion detectors, there's a print-out of instructions for it in the drawer under the microwave oven."

"Yeah, but we talked him out of stashing a Killbot in the broom closet, which he kind of wanted to do," Stan said. "Also, Dan helped."

"Dad?" Wendy asked, blinking. "Was he in on this?"

"He provided the lumber and built the privacy fence," Ford said, smiling. "It should be tall and sturdy enough to discourage bears and such creatures."

"Yeah, and don't climb it from the outside," Stan said. "McGucket strung some wires on it, and they're electrified. But don't worry about your dog, Mabel—there aren't any wires on the inside."

Dipper squeezed Wendy's hand. He could feel her emotion, and that she was too touched to say anything out loud, so he said it for her: "Thanks, guys. Hey, though, wait. This business of us getting bumped from Married Housing—"

"Ah, you wouldn't have liked it anyway," Stan said. "I saw the apartments. Not enough room to swing a cat in, if that's your idea of a good time. Not even a kitchen to yourselves. This'll be better. But, yeah, I can see what you're thinking, you're wondering was all that our doing." He sat there grinning.

"Well, was it?" Mabel asked.

That made Stan laugh. "I'll confess. I actually did date the Dean a long time back when she was Carla McCorkle. She's married to somebody else now, but we're still friends, and I arranged with her to send Dip and Wendy the letter about there being no room in the dorm. Don't blame her. I showed her pictures of this place—it wasn't this near nice when I took them, we've done some improvements and repairs, whatever. And since then, Lorena and Sheila picked out the furniture and appliances and such. Anyway, I showed Carla the photos, told her how we were upgrading it, and she agreed you guys would be happier here."

"Mabel," Ford said, "You're unusually quiet. I hope this house suits you."

"I want to move in right now!" Mabel yelled. "Yeah, it suits me! I love you two guys!"

"Well," Ford said, "in that case, you'll need to go to the Housing Director at Olmsted today, then. You can give up your dorm room—"

"My one-quarter of a dorm room that would cost me $6500 a term!" Mabel said. "Gladly!"

"Yes, you'll save money and also have more space here," Ford said. "But I learned that five o'clock today is the deadline for surrendering your dorm room without paying a penalty. The only way to make it is to do it in person in the Housing Office. I'll drive you in if you want to go take care of the paperwork on that."

Mabel wanted. She and Teek got into Ford's Lincoln and Ford drove them back south toward Olmsted.

In a friendly tone, Stan said, "Hey, I'm sorry, Dip. Ford and me just wanted to have a little fun. Hope the house makes up for it."

"Of course it does," Dipper said, grinning despite his initial irritation. "You really had us going, though. Or me, anyway. I think Wendy suspected something."

"Wellll . . ." said Wendy with a mysterious smile, "maybe a little bit. I thought when we first stopped that the great big fence behind the house looked like Dad's work, but I didn't really know he'd been coming to California to do any carpentry projects lately."

"Dan was real efficient," Stan told her. "He had the materials hauled in, like four truckloads of boards and heavy-duty posts and stuff, and I was here to accept them. Then the next day, Wednesday, Dan showed up with a crew. He'd already laid out the lines, they started to put it up, three guys assembling the panels, three more setting them in place and pouring concrete footings, and by Thursday noon they'd finished the whole job. Dan came here for a few hours supervising on Wednesday, then on Thursday he came back long enough to inspect the finished project. He didn't have to spend a lot of time here. Me and Ford took care of the materials cost—that's part of the investment."

"I'm gonna have to thank him," Wendy said.

"Me, too," Dipper told Stan.

"Dan would like that. You guys go explore," Stan said, sprawling on the sofa and turning the TV back to the poker channel. "When Ford calls and says that Mabel's taken care of her dorm room thingy, I'll drive you two into town to meet them. Ford and I want to treat you all to an early dinner. There's a place called the Chart Room, seafood place, supposed to be real good. Now you two beat it and let me watch this game. I know the Italian-looking player there, Vito Rao—lost to him in Vegas once. I wanna study how he plays in case I run up against him another time."

Dipper and Wendy found their way downstairs. The bonus room had a sliding glass door that opened onto a concrete patio, raised a few inches off the ground. Part of the patio lay directly under the porch, which had steps leading down to the yard off to the right.

They stepped off onto the grass and strolled around that enormous back yard, gently sloping down to the nut and fruit trees. The walnuts weren't ripe. Wendy said, "Come September and October, we can get bushels of 'em. Look how thick they're growing."

However, the apples and pears were coming right along. "These we can pick soon as we move in," Wendy said. "Apples will be ready by the middle of September. If we can get the time, I'll preserve some."

"We can take a bushel of apples in for each of the teachers," Dipper said, smiling at Wendy's enthusiasm.

"Good idea. And if we want to spend the time, we can make a little garden back here. Not big, maybe salad stuff, some berry bushes, like that."

"I have kind of a brown thumb," Dipper said. "But if you want, sure, I'll at least help with the hoeing and the weeding."

In the shade of the apple trees, Wendy stretched and said, "Man, this is such a big load off my mind! Tell you the truth, I was kinda worried about living all cramped up in a dorm. I always knew Stan had a heart of gold buried way down under that ornery hide."

"I think he did it mostly for Mabel," Dipper said, leaning against a tree trunk. "She's the daughter he wishes he'd had."

She gave his shoulder a playful shove. "Don't kid yourself. He did it for you, too, Dip. He's real proud of you."

They strolled on. "Pears are still green," Dipper said, looking up at the fruit in the trees.

Wendy tilted her head back, looking up at them. "Yeah, but they don't ripen on the tree. You pick 'em when they're mature, like these, and they ripen after they're picked. We're gonna miss most of these this year. Hey, you want to pick a few to take back to the Shack?"

Even without a ladder, and with a gray squirrel sitting on the fence about ten feet away and supervising their labor, they collected nearly three dozen, and Dipper walked back to the house to find something to carry them in. In a closet off the bonus room he found a mop, an upright vacuum cleaner, and—eureka—a couple of big galvanized pails, and in those they hauled the bounty back to the house.

Wendy had added a single beautiful apple, prematurely ripe and red, that she had found on one of the trees. They set the buckets down on the patio and turned to look again at the expanse of grass. Seven acres isn't much compared to the property Stan and Ford owned in Gravity Falls—that was measured in square miles—but it was plenty for a backyard. The squirrel, Dipper noticed, had hopped down in the yard and was digging around under the walnut trees.

"Tripper will love it," Dipper said. "Room to run, squirrels to chase."

"_I'm_ gonna love it," Wendy said. "Wonder if we can talk Mabel into going to Piedmont or Gravity Falls a couple weekends this fall."

"Why?" Dipper asked.

"Privacy now and then," she said. When Dipper gave her a raised-eyebrow glance of inquiry, she giggled. "Come on, dude, there's a hot tub right up there over our heads—and it looks to me like Dad reinforced the supports, so that's OK—and you know my fantasies about romancing in the water!"

He turned to her and hugged her. "Wendy Corduroy," he said softly, leaning his forehad against hers. "Are you tempting me?"

She didn't answer him directly. But with a wicked smile, she held up the red ripe apple, took a crunchy bite out of it, and with the sweet juice glistening on her lips and on the apple's skin, she offered it to him. "Want a bite?"

* * *

The End


End file.
